1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the design of circuit simulators, and more particularly to a circuit simulator having a particular method and means of communication between the engine processor and the component processors. 2. Description of the Related Art
A circuit simulator is a software-driven system used to predict the behavior of electrical circuits or other physical systems. Given a description of a circuit and a stimulus, the simulator generates and outputs the response of the circuit to the stimulus.
The user describes the circuit to the simulator by giving a list of components and a specification indicating how they are interconnected. Each component is described in terms of component primitives. The simulator has a mathematical model of each component primitive, and given the list of components, it is able to formulate a system of equations. The simulator then solves the system of equations and presents the solution to the user as the response of the circuit.
A circuit simulator can be thought of as having two major sections: an engine processor and one or more component processors.